Why evolutionary naturalism undermines liberal humanism

In one of my first posts on this blog, I wrote:

Perhaps some of the best-known words from our American heritage are the words from the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

But, if you are an atheist, there is no Creator, so we couldn't be created equal. Advanced thinker that he was for his time, TJ seems to have imbibed some creationist nonsense. Hence to reflect what an atheist really believes, it would have to be rewritten as follows:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men have evolved equally, and that they are endowed by Evolution with certain Inalienable Rights, that among these are Life , Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But thus altered, isn't this statement howlingly false? Evolution doesn't make people equal, it doesn't endow anyone with inalienable rights, and among these are certainly not life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

I'm not going to argue that atheists are bad citizens. But my question is what sense an atheist can make of these statements in the Preamble. Doesn't it conflict, profoundly, with what an atheist believes?

I wrote this way back in 2005. There has been some interesting discussion along these lines since. 

Interestingly enough, this issue has been taken  up by atheist Yuval Noah Harari. Vincent Torley takes up the issue in this discussion. Harari says that the statement form the Preamble must be revised in favor of this revision:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.

Hardly the basis of liberal humanism. 

Torley then goes on to quote the following passage: 

At the same time, a huge gulf is opening between the tentes of liberal humanism and the latest findings of the life sciences, a pull we cannot ignore much longer. Our liberal political and judicial systems are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority. This is a reincarnation of the traditional Christian belief in a free and eternal soul that resides within each individual. Yet over the last 200 years, the life sciences have thoroughly undermined this belief. Scientists studying the inner workings of the human organism have found no sould there. They increasingly argue that human behavior is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than by free will – the same forces that determine the behavior of chimpanzees, wolves, and ants. Our judicial and political systems largely try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries under the carpet. But in all frankness, how long can we maintain the wall separating the department of biology from the departments of law and political science?

(Emphases mine – VJT.)

Consider, for example, the defense of gay rights in our society today. The idea people have on this is that even if you don't like gay people, even if they are not your kind, you have an obligation not to discriminate against them, to give them, well, marriage equality. A lot of people think that an atheist position makes it easier to support gay rights and gay equality. Well, yes and no. If you are an atheist, you don't have to worry about whether God created marriage for a man and a woman. However, if your argument is based on the idea that everyone deserves to be treated equally, your atheism looks as if it undercuts the moral foundation of human equality, on which the case for gay equality is based. The atheistic sword that cuts away the anti-gay arguments based on Christian revelation is the same sword that cuts the heart out of the foundation of human equality, which is the very foundation of the case for gay equality in the first place. 

John Loftus on Richard Carrier

JWL: Richard Carrier thinks this book is bad to say the least, but I find Carrier to be shrill, very offensive and exaggerated in defense of his own work.

Here. 

The Seven Deadly Sins

Described here. 

Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.

Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.

Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.

Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.

Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.

Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.

Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.

A Christian case for abortion

Here. 

I can't be part of a church that has hypocrites in it

Of course, judgmental and hypocritical might just be right about God and Jesus. Churches claim to believe the truth, and the truth of what they believe is independent of whether or not they are hypocrites. In fact, people with higher moral standards are more likely to be hypocrites, because if you have no moral standards, then  you can't claim a higher moral standard than you practice, since you had no moral standard to begin with. 

Timothy McGrew on Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Here. 

Why is only empirical evidence evidence? Isn't this a self-refuting requirement?

This is from Sloan Lee's Facebook page. We've heard the "Where's  yer evidence" challenge around here a lot.

Consider the demand for empirical evidence -- or the question (often rhetorical): "What is your empirical evidence for that claim?" -- where empirical evidence is evidence based directly on sensory experience (or something along those lines). Often the demand for empirical evidence is made (or requested) without the modifier "empirical" -- but it is assumed or understood that this is the sort of evidence being demanded (or requested).

Often empirical evidence is just the sort of evidence one needs in order to answer a question or settle an issue. For instance, if you want to know how many chairs are in the room or whether or not any trees are planted in the courtyard, empirical evidence is just the sort of evidence that is most appropriate. However, is that the only sort of evidence that is acceptable or legitimate? What sort of empirical evidence could settle the question of whether or not 2 is necessarily an even number? What kind of empirical evidence could refute (or establish) whether it is necessarily true (or not) that only nothing comes from nothing? Not even quantum indeterminacy or particles arising from minimal energy states could do that.

In any case, this sort of epistemological demand sometimes (perhaps even often) has as a background assumption that the only legitimate appeal to evidence is the appeal to empirical evidence. However, such a demand is self-defeating. This assumption has no empirical support itself. Further, an appeal to the success of science will not help here, for the most that this can show is that certain sorts of issues are best investigated by empirical (or scientific) means. In other words, there is no good empirical evidence that the only kind of genuine or real or legitimate evidence that one can have is empirical evidence. So, if the only grounds that one can have for rationally believing something is empirical evidence, then (by its own standard) no one can rationally believe the claim that only empirical evidence is legitimate evidence.

Nevertheless, the demand for empirical evidence as the only legitimate evidence is an extraordinarily pervasive demand on internet discussions -- but that doesn't make it any less self-defeating as a demand (or as a question or as an assumption). It is such a pervasive mistake that I think that it deserves its own name. To that end, I suggest the following:

"The Empiricist Fallacy"

Of course, I'm open to hearing the thoughtful, polite, and well-articulated considerations of others on this issue.

The slippery slope fallacy on steroids

I see no good reason to believe that the banning of assault weapons will lead to the banning of all weapons, which would, of course, take a Constitutional amendment. I know a lot of people say this, but it strikes me as the slippery slope fallacy on steroids. We could save lives in mass shootings if we could prevent potential mass shooters from getting guns that can fire and fire without having to reload. Stopping to reload ends many a mass shooting, as in the shooting at Safeway in Tucson where Gabrielle Giffords was shot. Ordinary self-defense and ordinary hunting does not require us to fire without reloading. You could be in a defensive situation where you need an AR-15, but you could be in a defensive situation where you could sure use and hand grenade.

There is a rationale for some weapons restrictions even if we don't want to rip up the second amendment and confiscate all guns. So why use the slippery slope argument?

Do I have the right to carry a hand grenade? Or a nuclear bomb? +

Guns aren’t the only kind of arms you can have. A hand grenade is a weapon, too. If there should be no restriction on our right to have weapons, shouldn’t we allow people to carry hand grenades? Or how about a nuclear bomb? Is that protected by the Second Amendment? Why restrict the right to bar arms to tubes with triggers that shoot bullets? Isn't that an arbitrary limitation?

Does Trump lie in the way that you and I do?

According to this article?  No. 

Seven Types of Atheism

Here. 

Pluto is not a planet, it's a billion comets squished together

Here. 

Republic vs. Democracy and the Electoral College

The real purpose of the electoral college, which is spelled out as clearly as it can be spelled out in Federalist 68, is to put a layer of independent representation between the voters and the choice for President. His idea was that you wouldn't vote for Trump or Hillary. Who you would vote for are people who might choose between Trump or Hillary, or maybe put someone else in if they thought there was something wrong with both of them. If you take the republic vs. democracy argument seriously, that is where it leads you. I would admit that there is an element of geographical balancing in that the College is modeled on congressional representation, and so states with two senators and one congressman actually get more representation per capita than their population would warrant. But we aren't more of a republic and less of a democracy if we have a rubber-stamp electoral college and we reduce the college to a revised counting system. For centuries now people vote for actual candidates, and once their votes are counted, the electors have never surprised anyone or exercised any independent judgment, except for a few "rogues," and some states have passed laws making it illegal to do what Hamilton originally intended for electors to do, that is, exercise independent judgment.

The electoral college was designed to, among other things, stop demagogues from becoming President. The idea was that if a demagogue were to get the support of the people, the electors would exercise their own judgment and vote someone else in, even if the people who put the electors in wanted him for President, the electors could be counted upon to say no. You may disagree, but I think Trump is a dangerous demagogue with inadequate respect for the rule of law. In any event he had held no political office prior to the Presidency. If we had enshrined the Hamiltonian concept of the Electoral College into our system, I believe that the seasoned judgment of the electors would have prevented him from becoming President. A genuinely "Republican" conception of the electoral college would not have put Trump in the White House. And irony of ironies, the Democratic Party, with its superdelegate system, was far more "Republican" in its selection process, while the Republican party as more "Democratic," providing no way to stop a marginal Republican with great mass appeal to get the party's nomination for President. 

Now, either we buy the Republic vs. Democracy argument or we don't. If we do, we keep the electoral college, outlaw pledged electors and encourage independent judgment on the part of the electors. If we don't buy the Republic vs. Democracy argument, then we abolish the Electoral College and go to popular vote. But I can't see a good reason for keeping the Electoral College around after its primary function, to put a layer of independent, seasoned judgment between the people and the selection of the President, has been effectively eliminated. What Hamilton was talking about in Federalist 68 never came to fruition, and it is an equivocation to say that Hamilton was defending the Electoral College as it now exists.
Manage

The original purpose of the electoral college

The electoral college was put into place so that people would not elect the President directly, but would put that decision into the hands of other people who were better informed and would do the voting for them. The electoral college was set up before there even were political parties in America, and when the system of pledged electors emerged, Hamilton and Madison were horrified, claiming that this defeated the whole purpose of the Electoral College.

Now, you may like the idea of a system where living in a densely populated area means that your vote counts less, and living in a more populated area means your vote counts more. I don't see an argument for this offhand, unless large states were somehow exploiting the smaller ones, and they're not. No one is crucifying Middle America on a cross of gold. I don't see much force in the Argument from Geographical Balance myself. But even if this were a good argument, you cannot say that this is the reason the founders put in the Electoral College. Alexander Hamilton would not recognize the Electoral College as it is currently employed. The original purpose of the electoral college went by the boards shortly after our country was founded. 

A rebuttal of Judith Jarvis Thomson on Abortion

Here. 

Does the multiverse solve the problem of evil?

I once wrote a paper suggesting that the multiverse solves the problem of evil. So God could have created a better world? He did. Then he created this world and all the worlds worth creating.

Bad News for the Multiverse

Here. 

When we Christian behave badly

I had to take the abortion cartoon down

Because it was messing things up. But instead I want to discuss a statement I made many years ago, that if politics were logical, Democrats would be pro-life and Republicans would be pro-choice.

What do gun control advocates advocate?

A lot of people assume that those who advocate gun control want a blanket ban on guns. Virtually no one is suggesting this. Gun control advocates support assault weapons bans and strengthened background checks. 

Deal or no deal?

 OK here's a deal for pro-lifers. Or pro-choicers for that matter. You can defund Planned Parenthood. All you have to do is agree that the federal government will provide all the reproductive health services that PP provided absolutely free of charge to all women with the exception of abortion. Deal or no deal?

Roe v. Wade again

The argument in Roe v. Wade is that you cannot prove that the fetus has the same rights as those already born, and that moral reasoning leaves the question undecided. This was not only the majority opinion, it was explicitly not challenged in the dissent by Rehnquist, and was never argued by Roe opponents like Scalia. The argument in Roe was that we know a woman has a right to privacy, we don't know whether the fetus has as right to life, therefore the right we know takes precedence over the right that is open to reasonable doubt. Dissenters have only argued that the right to privacy is a made-up right and not really guaranteed in the Constitution, a position that I consider to be very implausible and, what is more, is not a real pro-life argument. Because the Court think there is a case beyond reasonable doubt that women have a right to privacy that extends to reproductive health issues such as birth control and abortion, opponents of abortion need to show beyond reasonable doubt that fetuses have the same right to life as babies. Maybe you think, say, the SLED argument does that, but if so, this would require a completely different, and to my mind, more intellectually honest legal strategy than the one that has been used by so-called pro-life justices from Rehnquist to Gorsuch.

Intellectually Honest Pro-Life Strategy

I think pro-life advocacy is, from a utilitarian perspective, a pretty weak way of saving lives, even fetal lives. Three pro-life Republican Presidents have not saved a single fetus. They cut off funding for Planned Parenthood in one county in Texas and it INCREASED the abortion rate. I do believe in a 24-hour waiting period, and having women view an ultrasound, and then choose. That is both pro-choice and pro-life. The only legal arguments that have ever been presented against Roe v. Wade don't argue that the fetus has a right to life and we can prove it. All they do is try to deny that women have a right to privacy in reproductive matters, allowing abortion to be a matter of democratic choice. But that seems absurd, and opposed to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because it would imply that fetuses have a right to life in Iowa but not in New York.

The only way to get an intellectually honest pro-life outcome out of the Supreme court would be to argue that fetuses have a provable right to life and then argue on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause that their lives should be protected. But if that is the case, we really have never had a pro-life justice on the Supreme Court, and we have never had a President with an intellectually honest pro-life strategy.

Legitimate investigation

The Mueller investigation is a witch hunt, and a deep state conspiracy, because some of his investigators are Democrats who preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.

The House Intelligence Committee's report, contending that there was no collusion, was a legitimate investigation, since all of the signatories were Republicans and supported Donald Trump for President.

Makes perfect sense.

How the NRA became radically opposed to all gun control

It didn't used to be that way, before the late 1970s when Hanlon Carter took over the organization.

Is proof necessary

 From here. 

"I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the existence of matter, nor of the good will & honesty of my best & oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Christianity in general is well given by Chesterton; and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks. As to why God doesn’t make it demonstratively clear: are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which would be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend a trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn’t be confidence at all if he waited for rigorous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy-tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona’s innocence when it was proved: but that was too late. Lear believed in Cordelia’s love when it was proved: but that was too late. ‘His praise is lost who stays till all commend.’ The magnanimity, the generosity which will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you would have paid the universe a compliment it doesn’t deserve. Your error would even so be more interesting & important than the reality. And yet how could that be? How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?"

C. S. Lewis, letter to Sheldon Vanauken (23 December 1950), from A Severe Mercy

Why evangelical Trump support is overrated

Here. 

Lead-footed Literalism

Taking the Bible literally is one way of abusing it.

Here.

Health care and capitalism

Some people think that health care should be an individual responsibility. Some people think that capitalism shouldn’t be undermined, and just as some people can’t afford a Mercedes, some people can’t afford health insurance. That’s just the breaks. If something is a matter of capitalism, some people are going to be unable to afford some things. Here. 

J. L. Mackie and the bunny rabbit

This is from J. L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism 

“…there is a priori no good reason why a sheer origination of things, not determined by anything, should be unacceptable, whereas the existence of a god with the power to create something out of nothing is acceptable.” 

 I usually reply to this with my bunny rabbit argument. Suppose you and I are eating lunch. You look away, and then, you notice a bunny rabbit is munching on your salad. You ask me how it got there, and I reply, that, funny thing, it just popped into existence without a cause. Would you take that seriously?

The China Delusion

 It looks as if they have been reading Richard Dawkins in China. “It is an offense for any organizations or individuals to guide, support, permit and condone minors to believe in religions or participate in religious activities,” the letter said.

The letter said minors were at a critical stage of physical and mental development and had no independent thinking, so parents had an obligation to nurture children in accordance with national laws and social requirements.

Here. 

HT: Bob Prokop

Lydia McGrew on approaches to the resurrection.

Here. 

The Sharpened Intellect

Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.

C. S. Lewis

Do you believe in American civil religion? Not me.

Discussed here.  

Civil religion, on the one hand, often refers to America's covenantal relationship with a divine Creator who promises blessings for the nation for fulfilling its responsibility to defend liberty and justice. While vaguely connected to Christianity, appeals to civil religion rarely refer to Jesus Christ or other explicitly Christian symbols. Christian nationalism, however, draws its roots from "Old Testament" parallels between America and Israel, who was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest, and separatism. Unlike civil religion, historical and contemporary appeals to Christian nationalism are often quite explicitly evangelical, and consequently, imply the exclusion of other religious faiths or cultures.

Does Richard Carrier Exist?

Here. 

A Christian tribute to an atheist philosopher

Here. 

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. So do slogans

If a gun is discharged and kills a person, it is true it is normally caused by a persons. So, a person decides to kill, this causes the person to pull the trigger, this causes the gun to discharge, and if it reaches its target, the person dies. So the gun caused the death, but the shooter caused the gun to caused the death.

But this doesn't meant that the availability of guns, or certain types of guns, or the availability of guns for certain types of people, isn't a bad thing. If a parent leaves a loaded gun out for a six-year old to get their hands on, and he shoots and kills his little brother, the parents can't just blame their kid and say "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." There is a reason why mass shootings happen in the US at a far more frequent pace than they happen in Britain, Canada, or the countries of Western Europe. With the Parkland shooting, someone with known violent tendencies has able to get a hold of an AR-15, a weapon that could kill numerous people in succession without the shooter having to reload. 

Slogans are very tricky. Because there is always a shooter who is morally responsible for the shooting, and the gun, as an inanimate object, is not responsible for the shooting, doesn't mean that there aren't reasonable ways in which we could limit gun availability and save lives. 

If I am homicidally angry and I have no weapon, I could choke someone to death, but that might prove difficult. Even stabbing someone to death with a kitchen knife might take a great deal of effort and be messy. If all I have to do is squeeze a trigger, it is going to be more likely that my homicidal intentions will reach fruition. And this will be so even if it is true that I and not my weapon if I use one, will be morally responsible for the act of homicide. 

Beware of slogans. They are often a substitute for critical thinking. 

It's Whately Time, again

This famous essay using anti-Christian arguments against Napoleon is a classic, and deservedly.

Why the universe had a beginning

Here. 

How God's nature is known

Some arguments for God. Here. 

Why are there Jesus skeptics but not Alexander the Great skeptics

Gary Habermas asks here. 

Obama on religious liberty

He does say this about opponents of same-sex marriage: 

I think it’s important to recognize that folks who feel very strongly that marriage should be defined narrowly as between a man and a woman, many of them are not coming at it from a mean-spirited perspective. They’re coming at it because they care about families. And they have a different understanding, in terms of what the word “marriage” should mean. And a bunch of ’em are friends of mine, pastors and people who I deeply respect.

But figures in his administration have not followed this up with their policy statements and actions,  unfortunately. 

McGrath on the Trilemma

Here.  It is designed to refute the idea that Jesus was a good man but not God, not to prove Jesus's divinity.

Reading assignment

People need to read C. S. Lewis's Meditation on the Third Commandment. Over, and over and over, and over, and over. 

Christianity will make you uncomfortable with the ideology of ANY party. If you are completely comfortable with the ideology of any party as a Christian, you are not thinking clearly.

The bigot-bomb and the 2016 election

By the way, the attempt to, as I call it, bigot-bomb people who believe in and defend traditional marriage by comparing them to Klansmen is one of the things that got Trump elected. Evangelical Christians noticed that Hillary's infamous "deplorables" comment took place at an LGBT gathering. That and some statements by Obama administration officials that trivialized religious freedom issues as merely a cover for discrimination. 

It is one thing to say that we need gay marriage to be fair within a religiously diverse society, but we understand the right and rationality of people to dissent from the idea that gay relationships can ever truly be marriage. It is another to attribute all opposition to bigotry, as something not even deserving of respect in a pluralistic society. 

What puzzles me about all of this is that the Democratic politicians like Obama, Biden, the Clintons, and Kaine, are all Christians. Hillary seems very serious about faith. I know conservatives like to discredit faith claims made by liberals, on the assumption that if they were true believers they wouldn't be pro-choice. But liberals could just as easily counter that they think the faith of conservatives is phony because they support public policies that harm the poor and the needy, something that is all over the Bible. 

If you look at Romans 1 and other passages on homosexuality, it doesn't look good for gay relationships at least on the face of things. 


Now there may be ways of interpreting those passages so that they aren't so bad for homosexuals, or you can say that they reflect a limited understanding of homosexuality from the first century and they are not God's final word on the matter. But you have to admit that if it can be reasonable to be a Christian (I take it all these Democratic politicians think that), then it can also be reasonable, based on what Christians think of a special revelation, that homosexual acts are sinful. Because these arguments are Christian-specific, they might not be an adequate basis for law, but when we separate church and state we leave areas for the church that the state has to keep its hands off. By contrast, no reasonable interpretation of the Bible supports white supremacy. (Curse of Ham? Give me a break). These Democrats are also recent converts to the idea of gay marriage (Hillary says that Chelsea convinced her to accept it), so was she a bigot when she opposed gay marriage? Was her husband a bigot when he signed DOMA? 

This implied bigotry charge against conservative Christians kept a lot of them in the Trump fold when Access Hollywood should have sent them running for the hills. I believe that if the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign had retained a respectful attitude toward opponents of gay marriage, even while disagreeing with those opponents, they evangelical bloc would not have held for Trump and Hillary would be President today.

I stand by my view that the price of electing a corrupt, impulsive, racist such as Trump who has spent a lifetime disrespecting women is too high to make this choice the right one. But I do understand it. 

A solution to the wedding providers' dilemma

A solution to the wedding providers' dilemma.

Four Reasons the Resurrection is a Fact

Here. 

The real argument of Roe v. Wade: Abortion and the burden of proof

People tend to assume (I used to) that the legal debate about Roe v. Wade parallels the moral arguments about abortion and fetal personhood. We typically think that those who support the decision accept arguments like those of Mary Anne Warren or Judith Jarvis Thomson that abortion is justified, and opponents of the decision advance arguments like those of John Noonan, or Francis Beckwith, or Scott Klusendorf that fetuses are persons and therefore Roe has to be wrong.

Actually, the debate over Roe doesn't turn on that. This is my best reconstruction of it.

1. There is a constitutionally guaranteed right of privacy, of which we can be certain.
2. In the case of abortion, the right of privacy must prevail unless there is a countervailing right of which we can be certain, such as the fetus's right to life. This protects a woman's right to consult with her doctor and decide whether or not to get an abortion. Just as it is a violation of privacy rights to make birth control illegal, it violates privacy right to prohibit abortion, unless a countervailing right can be established.
3. But the fetus's right to life cannot be established. Reasonable persons can disagree as to whether fetuses have a right to life or not. One may, based on one's religion perhaps, believe that they have this right, but this right cannot be demonstrated in the same way that the right of privacy can be demonstrated.
4. Therefore there is a Constitutional right to abortion.

All attempts to oppose Roe that I know of, starting with the Rehnquist dissent when the original case was argued, argue not against 3 but against 1. Scalia in one interview refused to refer to himself as a pro-life justice. All he argued was that the right of privacy on which the decision as based was made an absolute when it should not be, and that therefore abortion should be a matter of democratic choice.

It seems you can accept the Roe argument even if you, in your own viewpoint, believe that fetuses have the right to life and that abortion is always wrong. The question is not whether abortion is justified, the question is whether the fetus's right to life is as evident as a woman's right to privacy.

Is the right to privacy really in doubt? If not, do arguments like the SLED argument meet the requisite burden of proof? It would have to be so strong that it would be irrational to reject it.

See the discussion here.

Charles Colson's Argument from Watergate

“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”

The elder board's dilemma

                In a large church in a major American metropolis, there were two candidates for head pastor. One was selected for the pastorate. Then, after a year in the pastorate, it is discovered that the chosen pastor had had an affair with a porn star 10 years before, but, more than this, just before the final decision, he paid the star $10,000 for her silence. But the elder board says, “God is a God of forgiveness. Let’s give him a mulligan, and let him remain the preacher of the church.”

                What elder board would say a thing like that?

Jeff Lowder on gun violence

Here.  The idea of repealing the second amendment has just been defended by former justice Stevens.  He has been criticized here. 

The President's First Duty

The President's FIRST duty is to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States. That comes before nominating pro-life justices, or cutting taxes, or supporting Israel, etc. Unless you have been looking at him through Fox-colored glasses, I think the answer concerning Trump is overwhelmingly NO. It was bad enough that many Christian leaders supported him at election time, but I think I can understand it up to a point. At that time there was the contrast with Hillary. With respect to his extramarital relationships, I think we have the right to ask him to just come clean, and either tell the country that he doesn't think he has a duty to be a faithful husband because he has considers that requirement to be an outdated religiously-based prudish moral rule, or to say that he is deeply repentant for the disrespect for marriage, in word and deed, that he has shown in the past and that he has amended his behavior in the meantime. This is especially true for Christians who look to a Republican President to support traditional marriage and who find same-sex marriage to be a treat to that institution. Don't such Christians have a right to know if the President they are supporting respects the institution of marriage as they understand it? And shouldn't such Christians demand such answers from the President they support? 

Someone willing to make a payment of amount a few times my annual salary to keep someone silent is someone who is liable to be blackmailed by a foreign government to keep other improprieties quiet. His ability to put the American people first and uphold the Constitution has to therefore be questioned. 

Evangelical leaders are getting up on TV and giving Trump a whole bunch of breaks that they wouldn't give Clinton or any other previous President. Worse yet they focus on the actual affair, when the attempt, in violation of campaign finance laws, to keep someone from talking about the affair is far more serious. And if he has people out making threats of physical violence, this is worse. 

I am tired of hearing that the public policy bottom line is all that matters. A President who can't uphold the rule of law, who is so compromised that we can expect nothing but scandal after scandal, is someone who the American people will sooner or later turn against. I liked a lot of John Edwards' public policy proposals. But his character was so compromised that I would be far more comfortable with Mitt Romney in the White House than him. I think those who voted for Trump should have seen the handwriting on the wall when they voted for him back in 2016, but this constant talk of "mulligans" and "we believe in forgiveness" is nauseating and with a lot of people yes, it damages the credibility of Christianity. The Franklin Grahams and Tony Perkinses, not to mention Paula White, who says its a sin to oppose our President since God raises up kings, (How come we didn't hear that when Obama was in office), yes, they do give opponents of Christianity ammunition. 

What might undermine evangelical support for Trump

I suspect we will see a crisis in evangelical support for Trump, if, as I suspect, Stormy Daniels comes out and says that Trump paid for, and encouraged her to get, an abortion. That would make him in the eyes of the pro-life movement, a baby-killer not in the sense of being pro-choice and opposing government efforts to stop abortions, but actually being a contributing cause of an abortion, or even several abortions. Would THIS be a bridge too far?

Lennox on Hawking

Here. 

Oppose the weakening of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Let's oppose the weakening of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is personal for me, as it affects my immediate family. Two family members suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. Not to mention my late mother, who passed away in 1986 four years before the ADA was passed, and who spent many years on canes and crutches due to arthritis.

This explains the information about HR 620, which has already passed the House of Representatives. 

Rating ourselves as thinkers

What are the traits of a good thinker? Have you met people who you think are excellent thinkers? Have you read books by people you believe to be excellent thinkers? What makes them great? Then, we might ask, what makes a poor thinker.

Think about drivers for a minute. How many people, do you think, would rate themselves in the bottom half of drivers? What about the guy that cut you off in traffic today, or almost hit you? Do you that person would put himself or herself in the bottom half of drivers? If you think people overrate themselves as drivers, do you think also that people also overrate themselves as thinkers? And if this is so, what questions does that raise when you sit down and try to rate yourself as a thinker? 

Is sexual orientation immutable?

Here. 

Born this way? Maybe not..

Religion is not responsible for most wars- can people stop repeating this nonsense?

Moreover, the chief complaint against religion — that it is history’s prime instigator of intergroup conflict — does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored "God and War" audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history’s most lethal century of international bloodshed.

Scott Atran, atheist and anthropologist 

The case for the martyrdom of the apostles

Skeptics often criticize the idea that the apostles were really martyred. Sean McDowell argues that they were.

Willful ignorance, morality, and the right to our opinion

Is someone who is being willfully ignorant behaving immorally? If so, what happens the our so-called right to our opinion?

Gay marriage, the product of which 60s movement?

Is this the next step in the civil rights movement, or is it the newest stage of the sexual revolution. If you say the civil rights movement was a bad thing, this probably is not socially acceptable. If you say the sexual revolution was a bad thing, you might be called a prude, but you will get the support of a lot of people who thought the civil rights movement was a good movement.

What "gay marriage" does

To be clear, same-sex relationships existed before gay couples could be married by the government, and they have been doing may marriage ceremonies since 1969, without getting arrested. What the gay marriage government initiatives, culminating with the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage in 2015, has been government recognition of gay marriages, so that, for example, a same sex couple could check “married filing jointly” on their tax return and get some tax advantages. 

Did gay marriage permit gay people to love who they please? No. What would prevent them from loving who they please would be sodomy laws, which have been eliminated in most placed and were unenforced in many cases before they were eliminated. These laws  were declared unconstitutional in 2002, 13 years before the Obergfell decision. 

Accepting people

Should a person have to accept another person’s love life in order to accept them as a person? For example, if someone sleeps around, and I don’t think they ought to be sleeping around, does that mean that I reject who they are? Many people assume that if a person does not approve of gay sexual activity, they cannot accept a gay person as a person. But why think this? 

Is marriage equality a coherent idea?

Any institution of marriage involves some kind of inequality. That is, it treats some relationships as fitting objects of religious affirmation, or government support, or what not, while others are not. It is to say that certain relationships rise above the level of mere shackups and hookups, and worthy of some form of community respect. Therefore the term “marriage equality,” strictly speaking, is an oxymoron. The very idea of marriage, gay or not, implies that some relationships are marriages and others are not. 

Why is country of origin relevant to DACA?

This is a question, not a polemic. I really want to know. What is confusing about Trump's "s***hole countries" comment is the fact that this came up in the context of DACA. That is people who entered the country illegally as children, who as adults have either gone to college or joined the military, and who have no criminal record. While one could argue that country of origin might be relevant to overall immigration policy, so that on a merit-based system we might limit entry from countries on the basis of how well they might contribute to our society once they arrived (those from the poorest countries are least likely to be contributors to our society, one might reason), I don't see how in the world this applies to DACA-type cases where innocent illegal immigrants have shown there ability to contribute to America.

I am not here defending or criticizing the "merit-based" viewpoint on immigration. I just fail to see the relevance of these considerations to Dreamers. What these people have done since arriving in our country dwarfs the significance of country of origin in these cases, it seems to me. And if they have done all the since coming from a s***hole, it seems even more meritorious for them to have done what they have done, and extra cruel to send them back there.

Or did I misunderstand Trump?

What would banning abortion look like?

Would it look like this?

Pre-adolescent indicators of post-adolescent homosexuality? Evidence, anyone?

This is from Focus on the Family. 

As a parent, you should be aware that there are certain signs of pre-homosexuality that are fairly easy to recognize. They usually show up early in a child's life, and they generally fall under the heading of what might be called "cross-gender behavior." There are five markers to watch for in determining whether a boy or girl is a likely candidate for "gender identity disorder:"

• A recurring desire to be, or an insistence that he or she is, the opposite sex.
• Penchant for cross-dressing.
• A strong and persistent preference for cross-sexual roles in make-believe play, or persistent fantasies of being the other sex.
• An intense desire to participate in stereotypical games and pastimes of the other sex.
• A strong preference for playmates of the opposite sex.

I've never seen any good evidence for this sort of thing. Has anyone? 

William H. (Bill) Patterson

Heinlein archivist and biographer. I knew him from our old science fiction club in the Phoenix area from the mid-1970s. He passed away in 2014.

Here. 

Was Mendel and anti-Darwinist?

According to this paper, he was, although modern evolutionary theory is a synthesis of Mendel and Darwin.

Why atheists change their minds

Here. 

Of course, for some atheists, the fact that an atheist leaves the atheist fold is proof that they were never real atheists in the first place (the atheist equivalent of Perseverance of the Saints).

Who's to say?

Actually this depends on your view of moral values. Some people think that moral values are objectively valid, that is, they hold regardless of what people say. Thus, if everyone in society says that people over 65 should be killed, it is still wrong objectively to kill them. Some people believe this because of a belief in God’s commandments. Others just think, like atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg, that moral statements are just objectively true even without God. Others think that morals are determined by individuals or cultures. What that means is if a culture decides, for example, that it is obligatory for young girls to get female genital mutilation, then it is true for that culture, and no one has the right to say that is wrong. Though,, that’s not quite accurate, since if morals are relative to culture, and your culture says you should condemn and be intolerant of other cultures, then you should be intolerant of other cultures.

We could also ask, who is the state to tell a murderer that he has done the wrong thing?

Human rights and moral objectivity

It is part of the idea of a human right that it exists even when it is being violated. If someone is born a slave and dies a slave, defenders of human rights will say that the slave nonetheless has the right to liberty. What sense can be made of this idea? The best sense I can make of it is that there is an objectively binding moral obligation on the part of everyone to permit this person to be free, and that those who are enslaving him are violating that. The idea of human rights seems to entail moral objectivity, and on the view that there are no moral facts, it is hard to see what human rights could mean. 

Oxymorons

Jumbo Shrimp
Military Intelligence.
Business Ethics.
Reality Television Show.

Belief, unbelief, and the establishment clause

It would be very odd if our government were to make it legal to practice any religion  you wanted to, so long as  you practiced one, but prohibited you from lacking any religion at all. So, freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. But does freedom from religion involve more that this? If so, what? 

Suppose a religious professor at a state college were to make it his goal to get as many students to believe  his religion as possible. There seem to be at least some things he could do (for example, making it clear that anyone who wrote a paper in opposition to his religious beliefs would almost certainly get a failing grade), that would give the student grounds for suing based on the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. 

Now, suppose an atheist professor were to make it his stated goal to get as many students to become atheists as possible.  Are there things he could do that would give a religious student grounds for suing based on the Establishment Clause? Or, since it's nonbelief instead of belief, that's different? 

Hamilton and the Electoral College: Independent Electors, or an Alternative Counting System?

It is quite true that, from the point of view of the Constitution which determines how these things go, Trump is legitimately President despite getting less popular votes than Hillary. But if you buy the argument that we are a Republic and not a Democracy, and that is why we have the Electoral College, then you would have to accept Hamilton's justification for the EC, which is that people can't really be expected to vote directly for the President, (since they may be unfamiliar with the candidates, which was often the case in the early days before communication improved), but should instead trust the decision of the President to electors more familiar to them than the candidates whose judgment they could trust. Hamilton described electors in this way: 

"...men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice." 

But nowadays, we know all about the candidates and nothing about the electors, and the allegiances of the electors is guaranteed by the political parties to which they are affiliated. Although electors occasionally "go rogue," their votes are signed, sealed and delivered to the candidate whose party selected them.  The idea of Republic v. Democracy is that we select representatives to vote for President who have an independent voice. But they don't. They are the hacks of political parties. 

What the electoral college creates is an alternative counting system which favors citizens of smaller states over citizens of larger states. But that is not the original concept of the Electoral College. Hamilton would not recognize his creation if were to come back today. 

Is there any good reason to have an alternative counting system? I have my doubts. 

Cultural Relativism and that Illinois frat house

I was told when I was a grad student at the University of Illinois that there was a fraternity on campus that considered a girl's being on the second floor of the frat house with an alcoholic beverage to constitute consent. Isn't the frat house a culture? And if cultural relativism is true, then wouldn't that make raping a girl who came to the second floor with a drink in her hand morally acceptable? 

Will an ethics class help you be ethical?

A lot of our moral decisions occur when we know what the right thing to do is, and we are trying to find the guts to do it. In this type of situation, an ethics class won't help you. In fact, it might do  harm, because it might give you an excuse to come up with rationalized reasons not to do what you know is right. (What if, what if, what if.......) 

On the other hand, other issues are hard to decide from a moral point of view. If that is the issue, that is, an issue where moral reasoning is needed, then this course can be helpful. But no class is going to give you moral fortitude. 

Abortion and the right of privacy

The fetus has human DNA and the potential to develop into something with all the characteristic of human personhood. Depending on the stage of pregnancy, it lacks certain of the occurrent mental states that humans have. It is a borderline case. On my view it is of considerable value whether we think of it as fully a person or not fully a person. Our cats are not people, but I will get very very angry if you kill one of them. The Supreme Court decided that a woman had a knowable right to privacy with respect to her own reproductive medical decisions, and the fetus's right to life, as best they were able to ascertain, was not knowable. So, for legal purposes, the woman's right to privacy has to take precedence over the fetus's right to life, since we can be sure of the former but not the latter. Even the dissent in Roe, and the subsequent arguments of anti-Roe justices like Scalia, have not attempted to argue that the right of the fetus to life is knowable. Instead, they have tried to argue, and on my view not very plausibly, that the woman's right to privacy isn't really established, but is a product of judicial activism. People who vote Republican (and even vote for a Republican Presidential candidate whose pro-life convictions are highly suspect) in order to get Roe overturned are hoping for justices who will undercut the status of the right of privacy. But I think it's not judicial activism, I think there is a legitimate right of privacy. 

Catholic politicians such as Joe Biden believe that, as a matter of revealed truth, we can know that fetuses are persons. However, he agrees with the Supreme Court that the personhood of the fetus isn't knowable by all citizens, and he agrees with the Supreme Court that a woman's right to privacy implies a right to an abortion unless a countervailing right of the fetus to life can be established as knowable by all citizens. Therefore he believes that the current status of the law is correct with respect to abortion even though he also believes, as a Catholic, that fetuses are persons.

Morality and the causal structure of the world

 Morality needs to connect with the causal structure of the world. If morality means anything at all, it has to be a reason why we do some of the things we do. "I decided I couldn't cheat on my taxes. It would be wrong." "She was so beautiful, and so seductive, but I remembered my marriage and realized it would be wrong to sleep with her." "I can't keep working at this car dealership. I have to keep lying to customers, and it's just wrong." This is one problem I have with Wielenberg's Robust Ethics, morality is causally inert for him. But it can't be. Yet, at least naturalistic atheism believes in a causally closed world of physical and only physical causes. Morality, even if it exists, doesn't do anything. If you believe in automonous ethics, we need an account of how that realm can have something to do with the actual occurrence of moral conduct. Christian theism has a way of doing that. Naturalism does not.

Are the Ethics of Belief Objective?

 If all versions of robust ethics without God a la Wielenberg fail, and atheism leads to moral subjectivism, then we could say that if there is no God everything is permitted. That includes racism, sexism, homophobia, and believing in God without a shred of evidence.

There is no Plan B

If you think Christianity is about your physical wellbeing here. If you think Christianity is about your living the American Dream. If you think Christianity is about your having an improved lifestyle here, then you are going to question the truth of Christianity when hardship comes because the Lord doesn’t promise you those things.

Therefore, it is paramount that we have a correct understanding of what Jesus promised and didn’t promise if we are to have confidence in what Jesus is doing to and through us on planet Earth. Jesus promised to be with you through suffering; He didn’t promise that you would avoid it. I tell my classes, “God’s Plan A for your life is to take you through regular periods of suffering and there is no Plan B.” Suffering purifies us and, if we bear it while continuing to honor God, it proves to humans and angels that we really are His disciples. — Clay Jones (from, The Major Reason Christians Doubt)

Donald Trump and the baker

President Donald Trump divorces Melania, and becomes engaged to the beautiful Svetlana Putina, the 27-year-old daughter of Vladimir Putin. He contacts Fabulous Cakes and Designs, owned by evangelical Christian baker Jack Graham, who is asked to bake a YUGE cake for a wedding at Trump Tower. Graham refuses, on the grounds citing Matthew 9:19. 

I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."

Besides, the President is a known serial adulterer and p**** grabber, whose disrespect for the institution of marriage is well-known. 

The infuriated President files a suit with the Civil Rights Commission, claiming discrimination on the basis of marital status. 

Reductio? No, the defender of religious freedom can just support the baker, not Trump. 

Andrea vs. Hillary on Female Genital Mutilation: Who is right?

•How can I argue against a culture I haven't tried to understand? Is it relevant that I, an outsider, may find [clitorectomies] cruel? As hard as it is for me to admit, the answer is no. To treat the issue as a matter of feminist outrage would be to assume that one society, namely mine, has a privileged position from which to judge the practices of another.—Andrea Park-1992.

"We cannot excuse this as a cultural tradition. There are many cultural traditions that used to exist in many parts of the world that are no longer acceptable. We cannot excuse it as a private matter because it has very broad public implications. It has no medical benefits. It is, plain and simply, a human rights violation,”-Hillary Clinton, 2012.